Morning Notes
ARLnow.com Today at 6:00am

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Cab Exec’s Offensive Post Makes Headlines — “An elected town council member in Strasburg, Va., who also is chairman of the 6th Congressional District’s Republican Committee admitted this week that he posted, then removed, a sexually offensive meme targeted at Sen. Kamala D. Harris… [John] Massoud, who is vice president of Arlington’s Blue Top taxi service and was an unsuccessful candidate against ex-Del. Bob Brink for a House of Delegates seat from Arlington in 1997 and 1999, moved to the Shenandoah Valley about 10 years ago.” [Washington Post]

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Strasburg GOP leader posts sexist meme about Harris on party's online page
By PATRICIA SULLIVAN (c) 2020, The Washington Post Aug 14, 2020

An elected town council member in Strasburg, who also is chairman of the 6th Congressional District's Republican Committee, admitted this week he posted, then removed, a sexually offensive meme targeting Sen. Kamala D. Harris, D-Calif., hours after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden chose her as his running mate.

John Massoud told the Strasburg mayor and town manager he posted the meme Tuesday night, then took it down Wednesday morning after he "received some flak." By that time, several residents of the town about 80 miles west of Washington, D.C., had copied the image and had begun discussing it on a closed 600-member Facebook group, Shenandoah Indivisible.

The posting made a crude reference to her relationship with Willie Brown, a prominent California Democrat who served as San Francisco mayor and speaker of the State Assembly. He and Harris dated in the 1990s, when she was single and he was separated from his wife.

Massoud, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Washington Post, said in a newsletter he sends to local Republicans that he, "like many millions of Americans," posted a meme on social media.

"Virtue signalers in the Democratic party have taken to calling me a sexist and a racist because I referred to Senator Harris using politically incorrect language . . . While reasonable people can discuss the colorful language used — facts are facts."

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